TALLAHASSEE — The U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether Florida’s law on jury size is constitutional.
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The nation’s top court on Monday agreed to hear the case of Hamed Kian, a Jupiter-based chiropractor convicted by a six-person jury of five counts of practicing chiropractic medicine with a suspended license.
Kian petitioned the court in January asking if his Sixth Amendment rights were violated by not being provided a trial by a 12-person jury when charged with a serious felony.
Florida’s Fourth District Court of Appeal affirmed the convictions and sentences on Oct. 16, 2025. The sentences included one year and one day in prison and five years of probation.
Six-person juries are used in criminal cases that don’t involve the death penalty.
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Kian contends that Williams v. Florida, where the court ruled in 1970 that a six-person jury did not violate the Constitution, has been subsequently rejected by a 2020 ruling and should be overturned.
Kian’s petition noted that in Ramos v. Louisiana in 2020 the court found the “Sixth Amendment’s ‘trial by an impartial jury’ requirement encompasses what the term ‘meant at the Sixth Amendment’s adoption.’” Kian claims “that term meant trial by a jury of twelve whose verdict must be unanimous.”
Kian’s arguments also claim smaller juries and non-unanimous verdicts were part of a Jim Crow era effort to suppress minority voices in public affairs.
“When the Florida Legislature reduced the size of juries from twelve to six in 1877, it also re-established the ‘integrity, fair character, sound judgment and intelligence’ test for jury service,” the petition before the court states.
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